THE older I grow the more it seems to me that all men are alike
and that they have been alike at all periods of history, capable
of the same development and differing only because of environment.

I do not believe, for example, that any mystery is concealed
behind the faces of the peoples of the East. Once I asked Soughimoura,
my colleague in Berlin, Ambassador of Japan, whether the Japanese
were as much subject to nerves as western peoples. He answered
in the affirmative but said they were taught from infancy to control
their nerves. I asked him how, and he said the principle of the
system was deep abdominal breathing with a slow release of the
breath as soon as nervousness came on. Japanese wrestlers practised
this, he added, and when a man took deep breaths it was almost
impossible to throw him.

Of course, social life and customs change with climate. But
education is the most powerful factor of all. The Aztecs of Mexico
offered human sacrifices, but the letter of the Aztec mother to
her daughter, giving advice and counsel, mentioned by Prescott
in his history, might have been written by a New England mother
to-day. Somewhere in the world is a savage eating human flesh,
persuaded that in so doing he is acting in accordance with the
tenets of his religion.

These are the extremes.

But the German or rather the Prussian, has been moulded into
the extraordinary person that he is to-day by a slow process of
education extending through several generations. At Marienburg,
on the Baltic shore of Germany, stands the ancient castle of the
Teutonic Knights recently restored by the German Kaiser. The Knights
at one time conquered and occupied much of the territory that
is now modern Prussia. A military religious order, they attracted
adventurers from all lands and their descendants constitute many
of the noble families .of Prussia. It is this tradition of conquest
for gain that still animates the ruling class of Prussia and therefore
all Germany.

Later through the middle ages and as the central power of the
Emperor grew weaker and weaker., what is to-day Germany became
a nest of dukedoms and principalities. Before the French Revolution
these numbered hundreds. After the Thirty Years' War which ravaged
Germany from 1615 to 1645 extreme poverty was often conspicuous
at these petty courts. War was an industry and the poor German
peasants were frequently bartered as slaves to the war-god, as
the Hessians were sold by their ruler to the British in our War
of the Revolution. The Germans were then the mercenaries of Europe,
savages skilled in war, without mercy towards the towns unfortunate
enough to be given to their pillage. There is no more horrible
event in all history than that of the sack of Rome by the German
mercenaries in the year 1527. Under General George von Frundsberg,
who joined forces with the recreant constable Bourbon of France
and the Spaniards, these lawless Germans invaded the fertile plains
of Italy and took Rome by assault.

The most awful outrages were perpetrated. Prelates were tortured
after being paraded through the streets of the Eternal City, dressed
in their sacred pontificals and mounted on donkeys. Altars were
defiled, sacred images broken, vestments and services and works
of art taken from the plundered churches and sacred relics insulted,
broken and scattered. For nine months the orgy continued, the
inhabitants being tortured by these German soldiers in their effort
to find hidden treasure. In fact conditions in Belgium to-day
had their counterpart centuries ago in the treatment of Roman
Catholic Priests and the people of Rome.

The great change in the feeling of the country towards Prussia
since the latter's conquest of the rest of Germany in 1866, is
still exemplified by one quotation from Goethe. He said, "The
Prussian was born a brute and civilisation will make him ferocious."
We all have seen how prophetic was this sentence. Skilled in chemistry,
in science, well educated, made rich by manufacturing and foreign
commerce, the Prussians of to-day have shown themselves far more
bloody, far more cruel than the German lansquenet of the middle
ages who sold himself, his two handed sword, his military experience
and his long lance to the highest bidder.

Tacitus tells of how the ancient Germans when drawn up in battle
array used to sing a sort of war song to terrify their enemies.

It was Goethe incidentally who remarked "Amerika, du hast
es besser." (America, you are better off.) The poet who died
in 1832 foresaw, indeed, the coming power of the free democracy
across the seas.

It was interesting to note the psychological development of
the Germans during the war. For the very short time while war
hung in the balance there was a period almost of rejoicing, among
the singing crowds in the streets---a universal release of tension
after forty years' preparation for war.

Next came the busy period of mobilisation and then, as the
German armies swept through Belgium and France, stronghold and
fortress falling before them, there came a period of intense exaltation,
a period when the most reasonable Germans, the light of success
and conquest in their eyes, declared German Kultur would now be
imposed on the whole world.

The battle of the Marne ended this period of rejoicing and,
through the winter of 1914-1915, when it became apparent that
Germany would not win by a sudden assault, the temper of the people
began to change to an attitude of depression.

It has been at all times the policy of the German autocracy
to keep the people of Germany from amusing themselves. I know
of no class in Germany which really enjoys life. The Counts and
Junkers have their country estates. Life on these estates, which
are administered solely for profit, is not like country life in
England or America. The houses are plain and, for the most part,
without the conveniences of bath rooms and heating to which we
are accustomed in America. Very few automobiles are owned in Germany.
There are practically no small country houses or bungalows, although
at a few of the sea places rich Jews have villas.

The wealthy merchant takes his vacation in summer at Carlsbad
or Kissingen or in some other resort where his physical constitution,
disorganised by over-eating and over-drinking, can be regulated
somewhat. Many Germans take their families to Switzerland where
the German of all ages with knapsack and Alpine stick is a familiar
sight.

Earnestness is the watchword. For should the people once get
a taste of pleasure they might decide that the earth offered fairer
possibilities than life in the barracks or the admiring contemplation
of fat and complacent grand dukes and princes.

Much of this sycophancy is due to the poverty of the educated
classes. Salaries paid to officials are ridiculously small. The
German workingmen both in wages and living are on a lower scale
than those of other western nations with the possible exception
of Russia, Italy and the Balkan States. The professional and business
classes earn very little. The reason for the superiority of the
German in the chemical industry is because a chemist, a graduate
of the university, can be hired for less than the salary of an
American chauffeur.

And this earnestness of life was insisted upon even to a greater
degree by the autocracy with the opening of war. The playing of
dance music brought a visit from the police. The theatres at first
were closed but later opened. Only plays of a serious or patriotic
nature were originally permitted. Dancing was tabooed, but in
the winter of 1915-1916 Reinhardt was allowed to produce a ballet
of a severely classical nature and at the opera performances the
ponderous ballet girls were permitted to cavort as usual.

I saw no signs of any great religious revival, no greater attendance
at the churches. Perhaps this was because I was in the Protestant
part of Germany where the church is under the direct control of
the government and where the people feel that in attending church
they are only attending an extra drill, a drill where they will
be told of the glories of the autocracy and the necessity of obedience.
In fact, religion may be said to have failed in Germany and many
state-paid preachers launched sermons of hate from their state-owned
pulpits.

Always fond of the drama and opera I was a constant attendant
at theatres in Berlin. The best known manager in Berlin is Reinhardt,
who has under his control the Deutsches Theatre with its annex,
the Kammerspiel and also the People's Theatre on the Bülow
Platz. I made the acquaintance of Mr. Reinhardt and his charming
wife who takes part in many of his productions. I dined with them
in their picturesque house on the Kupfer Graben. In the Deutsches
Theatre the great revolving stage makes change of scene easy so
that Reinhardt is enabled to present Shakespeare, a great favourite
in Germany, in a most picturesque manner. He manages to lend even
to the most solemn tragedy little touches that add greatly to
the interest and keep the attention fixed.

For instance in his production of "Macbeth," when
Lady Macbeth comes in, in the sleep-walking scene, rubbing her
hands and saying, "What, will these hands ne'er be clean?"
the actress taking this part in Berlin gave a very distinct and
loud snore between every three or four words: thus most effectively
reminding the audience that she was asleep.

As the war continued the taste of the Germans turned to sombre,
tragical and almost sinister plays. Only a death on the stage
seemed to bring a ray of animation to the stolid bovine faces
of the audience. In my last winter in Berlin the hit of the season
was "Erdgeist," a play by Wedekind, whose "Spring's
Awakening," given in New York in the spring of 1917, horrified
and disgusted the most hardened Broadway theatregoers. The principal
female rôle was played by a Servian actress, Maria Orska---very
much on the type of Nazimova. In this play, presented to crowded
audiences, only one of the four acts was without a death.

Another favourite during war-time, played at Reinhardt's theatre,
was "Maria Magdalena." The characters were the father,
mother, son and daughter of a German family in a small town and
two young men in love with the daughter. In the first act the
police arrest the son for theft, giving the mother such a shock
that she dies of apoplexy on the stage. In the second act, the
two lovers have a duel and one is killed. In the third act, the
surviving lover commits suicide, and, in the fourth act, the daughter
jumps down the well. The curtain descends leaving only the old
man and the cat alive and the impression is given that if the
curtain were ten seconds later either the cat would get the old
man or the old man would get the cat!

The mysterious play of Peer Gynt was given in two theatres
during each winter of the war. All of Ibsen's dramas played to
crowded houses. Reinhardt, during the last winter I was in Berlin,
produced Strindberg's "Ghost Sonata," in quite a wonderful
way. The play was horrible and grewsome enough, but as produced
by him, it gave a strong man nightmare for days afterwards.

The German soul, indeed, seems to turn not towards light and
gay and graceful things, but towards bloodshed and grewsomeness,
ghosts and mystery---effect doubtless of the long, dark, bitter
nights and gray days that overshadow these northern lands.

I think the only time I lost my temper in Germany was when
a seemingly reasonable and polite gentleman from the Foreign Office
sitting by my desk one day, in 1916, remarked how splendid it
was that Germany had nearly two million prisoners of war and that
these would go back to their homes imbued with an intense admiration
of German Kultur.

I said that I believed that the two million prisoners of war
who had been insulted and underfed and beaten and forced to work
as slaves in factories and mines and on farms would go back to
their homes with such a hatred of all things German that it would
not be safe for Germans to travel in countries from which these
prisoners came, that other nations had their own Kultur with which
they were perfectly satisfied and which they did not wish to change
for any made-in-Germany brand!

Certain Germans have prated much of German "Kultur,"
have boasted of imposing this "Kultur" on the world
by force of arms. What is this German "Kultur"? A certain
efficiency of government obtained by keeping the majority of the
people out of all voice in governmental affairs, a certain low
cost of manufactured products or of carrying charges in the shipping
trades made possible by enslaving the workmen who toil long hours
for small wages---a certain superiority in chemical production
because trained chemists, willing to work at one semi-mechanical
task, can be hired for less than a Fifth Avenue butler is paid
in America, and a certain pre-eminence in military affairs reached
by subjecting the mass of the people to the brutal, boorish, non-commissioned
officers and the galling yoke of a militaristic system.

Subtract the German Jews and in the lines of real culture there
would be little of the real thing left in Germany. Gutman, Bleichroeder,
von Swabachy Friedlander-Fuld, Rathenau, Simon, Warburg in finance;
Borchardt and others in surgery, and almost the whole medical
profession; the Meyers, the Ehrlichs, Bamberger, Hugo, Schiff,
Newburger, Bertheim, Paul Jacobson, in chemistry and research;
Mendelssohn, and others, in music; Harden, Theodor Wolf, Georg
Bernhard and Professor Stein in journalism.

But why continue---about the only men not Jews prominent in
the intellectual, artistic, financial, or commercial life of Germany
are the pastors of the Lutheran Churches. And the Jews have won
their way to the front in almost a generation. Still refused commissions
in the standing army (except for about 114 since the war), still
compelled to renounce their religion before being eligible for
nobility or a court function, still practically excluded from
university professorships, considered socially inferior, the Jews
of Germany until a few years ago lived under disabilities that
had survived from the Middle Ages. They were not allowed to bear
Christian names. The marriages of Jews and Christians were forbidden.
Jews could not own houses and lands. They were not permitted to
engage in agriculture and could not become members of the guilds
or unions of handicraftsmen. When a Jew travelled he was compelled
to pay a tax in each province through which he passed. Jews attending
the fair at Frankfort on the Oder were compelled to pay a head
tax, and were admitted to Leipzig and Dresden on condition that
they might be expelled at any, time. Berlin Jews were compelled
to buy annually, a certain quantity of porcelain, derisively called
"Jew's porcelain" from the Royal manufactory and to
sell it abroad. When a Jew married he had to get permission and
an annual impost was paid on each member of the family, while
only one son could remain at home, and the others were forced
to seek their fortune abroad. The Jews could worship in their
own way, in some states, provided they used only two small rooms
and made no noise.

The reproach that the Jew is not a producer, but is a mere
middleman, taking a profit as goods pass from hand to hand, is
handed down from the time when Jews were forbidden by law to become
producers and, therefore, were compelled to become traders and
middlemen, barred from the guilds and from engaging in the cultivation
of the soil.

The German newspaper in size is much smaller than ours. If
you take an ordinary American newspaper and fold it in half, the
fold appearing horizontally across the middle of the page and
then turn it so that the longer sides are upright, you get an
idea of the size. There are no editorials in German newspapers,
but articles, usually only one a day, on some political or scientific
subject, one contributed by a professor or some one else supposedly
not connected with the newspaper.

The editor of the German newspaper in his desire to poison
and colour the news to suit his own views does not rely upon an
editorial, but inserts little paragraphs and sentences in the
news columns. For instance, a note of President Wilson's might
be printed and after a paragraph of that, a statement something
like this will be inserted in parentheses. "This statement
comes well from the old hypocrite whose country has been supplying
arms and ammunition to the enemies of Germany. The Editor."
A few sentences more or a paragraph of the note and another interlineation
of this kind. Small newspapers have a news service furnished free
by the government, thus enabling the latter to colour the news
to suit itself. It is characteristic of Germany and shows how
void of amusement the life of an average citizen is and how the
country is divided into castes, that there is no so-called society
or personal news in the columns of the daily newspaper.

You never see in a German newspaper accounts common even to
our small town newspapers, of how Mrs. Snooks gave a tea or how
Mrs. Jones, of Toledo, is visiting Mrs. Judge Bascom for Thanksgiving.
If a prince or duke comes to a German town a simple statement
is printed that he is staying at such and such a hotel.

German newspapers, as a rule, are very pronounced in their
views, either distinctly Conservative or Liberal or Socialist
or Roman Catholic. The Berliner Tageblatt is nearest our
idea of a great independent, metropolitan, daily newspaper. Other
newspapers represent a class and many of them are owned by particular
interests such as the Krupps and other manufacturers or munition
makers.

There is little that is sensational in the German newspaper.
I remember on one occasion that two women murderers were beheaded
in accordance with German law. Imagine how such an occurrence
would have been "played up" in the American newspapers,
with pictures, perhaps, of the executioner and his sword, with
articles from poets and women's organisations, with appeals for
pardon and talk of brainstorms and the other hysterical concomitants
of murder trials in the United States. But in the German newspapers
a, little paragraph, not exceeding ten lines, simply related the
fact that these two women, condemned for murdering such and such
a person, had been executed in the strangely medieval manner---their
heads cut off on the scaffold by a public executioner.

The German newspapers in reporting police court and other judicial
proceedings often omit names and it is possible in Berlin for
a man to prosecute a blackmailer without having his own name in
print.

When a German victory was announced flags were displayed, but
as the war progressed so many victories announced turned out to
be nothing wonderful or decisive that little attention was paid
to the vainglorious flaunting of German triumphs. Following an
old custom ten or fifteen trumpeters climbed the tower of Rathhaus
or City Hall and there quite characteristically blew to the four
quarters of Heaven; but again as these official and brazen blowings
were not always followed by the confirmation in fact, trumpetings
were gradually discontinued.

The Germans cleverly kept back the announcement of certain
successes in order to offset reverses. For instance, on a day
when it was necessary to tell the people of a German retreat the
newspapers would have great headlines across the front of the
first page announcing the sinking of a British cruiser (sunk,
perhaps, a month before) and then hidden in a corner would be
a minimised announcement of a German defeat.

To us in Germany there was at the time no battle of the Marne.
So gradually was the news of the retreat of the German forces
broken to the people that to-day the masses do not realise that
the .fate of the world was settled at the Marne!

.

CHAPTER X

THE LITTLE KAISERS

A the king idea seems inseparably connected with war there
is no country in the world where kings and princes have been held
in such great account as in the Central Empires.

I believe there are only two Christian kings in the world-the
kings of Italy and of Montenegro---who are not by blood related
to some German or Austrian royalty.

For remember that while we think of Germany as ruled by the
Kaiser and while it is his will that is certainly imposed upon
the whole of that territory which does not exist politically or
even geographically but which we call Germany, there are houses
of royalty in it almost as numerous as our big corporations. There
are the three kings of Bavaria, Würtemburg and Saxony, grand
dukes and dukes, and princes, all of them taking themselves very
seriously and all of them residing in their own domains; jealously
keeping away from the Emperor's court and jealously guarding every
remnant of rule which the constitution of the German Empire has
bequeathed to them.

Once I asked one of these princelings what his older brother,
the reigning prince, did with his time in the small provincial
town which is the capital of the principality. The brother looked
at me with real surprise in his eyes and answered, "Why he
reigns !"

Before the constitution of the German Empire, many of these
poverty-stricken little courts were centres of kindly amusement,
even of intellectual life.

The court of the Grand Duke Charles-Augustus, of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach
at Weimar where Goethe resided and where he was entrusted with
responsible state duties, was renowned in Europe as a literary
centre.

Many of these princelings, however ridiculous their courts
may have seemed, exercised despotic power. To-day the inhabitants
of the two Mecklenburg duchies are protected by neither constitution
nor bill of rights. The grand duke's power is absolute and he
can behead at will any one of his subjects in the market-place
or torture him to death in the dungeons of the castle and is responsible
to God alone.

Here is an example from history. George Louis, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg-Celle,
married his mistress, a Huguenot girl called Eleanore d'Olbreuze.
They had one daughter, Sophia Dorothea, who married the Elector
of Hanover, who was also George I of England. Sophia Dorothea
was supposed to have been involved in a love affair with a Swedish
Count, Philip Konigsmarck. Konigsmarck was murdered by order of
George I, and Sophia Dorothea incarcerated in Ahlden where she
died in 1726. Konigsmarck's sister went to Saxony to beg the aid
of the Saxon King, Augustus the Strong. She failed to get news
of her brother, but became one of the mistresses of Augustus the
Strong and the mother of the celebrated Marshal Saxe. I say one
of the "mistresses" of Augustus the Strong because he
boasted that he was the father of 365 illegitimate children!

The daughter of Sophia Dorothea was the mother of Frederick
the Great and his brothers, and therefore, an ancestor of the
present German Kaiser. Any one writing about her in a disparaging
manner is subject to be imprisoned, under the decisions of the
Imperial Supreme Court, for "lèse-majesté"
or injuring the person of the present monarch in daring to slander
his ancestors. And, I suppose, any one referring to Augustus the
Strong may be shut up in Dresden for insulting a predecessor of
the present King.

Every year the nobles of the Central Empires hold a convention
at Frankfort, where the means are discussed by which their privileges
may be preserved. No newspaper prints an account of this Convention
of the highest Caste.

The German peasants, as far as I have seen, are not so much
under the dominion of feudal tradition as are the peasants in
Austria and Hungary.

I was shooting once with a Hungarian Count who stationed me
in one corner of a field to await the partridges, which driven
by the beaters were expected to fly over my head and as I stood
waiting for the beaters to take up their positions two peasant
girls walked past me. One of them, to my surprise, caught hold
of my hand, which she kissed with true feudal devotion. As a guest
of the Count I was presumably of the noble class and therefore
entitled by custom and right to this mark of subjugation. And
it became quite a task in walking through the halls of the castle
to dodge the servants, all of whom seemed anxious to imprint on
me the kiss of homage.

Thackeray in the "Fitzboodle Confessions" gives a
most amusing account of life in one of these small, sleepy, German
courts and relates how he left Pumpernickel hurriedly, by night,
after the court ball where he had discovered not only that his
German fiancée had eaten too much, but that she had a taste
for bad oysters.

All of these small kings and princes are jealous of the King
of Prussia and of his position of German Emperor and show their
jealousy by avoiding Berlin.

In October, 1913, when in London on my way to Germany, I met
the young Grand Duke of Mecklenberg Strelitz in the Ritz Hotel
where he was dining with an English earl and his beautiful wife.
As I happened to have a box for the Gaiety Theatre, we all went
there together and paid a visit to George Grossmith behind the
scenes and talked with Emmy Wehlen, the Austrian actress, who
was appearing in the comic opera then running. But in all the
time that I was in Germany I never once saw or heard of the young
Grand Duke who rules the subjects of his duchy with autocratic
rule without even the semblance of a constitution.

Formerly our minister used to be accredited to some of these
courts and, on inquiring informally through a friend, I learned
that the American Minister is still accredited to Bavaria on the
records of the Bavarian Foreign Office, no letters of recall ever
having been presented. The fact that the American Ambassador is
accredited to none of these courts is a distinct disadvantage
because without letters of credence he does not come into contact
with any of the twenty-four rulers of Germany who control the
Bundesrat in which their representatives sit, voting as they are
told by the kings, grand dukes and princes. A number of these
kings and princelings, combining in the Bundesrat, can outvote
the powerful king of Prussia. But they don't dare!

.

CHAPTER XI

ROYALTY'S RECREATION

I HAD a shooting estate about twenty miles from Berlin, one
that I could reach by automobile in forty-five minutes from the
door of the Embassy. Because of the strict German game laws I
had better shooting there than within two hundred miles of large
cities in America.

There seemed to be something to shoot there almost every day
of the year. On the sixteenth of May the season opened for male
roe---a very small deer. About the first of August the ducks,
which breed in northern Germany, can he shot. These were mallards
and there were about two thousand or more on a lake on my preserve.
We usually shot them by digging blinds in the oat fields, shooting
them after sunset as they flew from the lake to feed in the newly
harvested grain. The season for Hungarian partridge opened on
August 20th. These were shot over dogs in the stubble and in the
potato fields. After a few weeks partridges became very wild and
we then shot them with a kite. When we had put up a covey out
of range and marked where they went down in a potato patch or
field, perhaps of lucern or clover, a small boy would fly a kite
made in the form of a hawk over the field. This kept the partridges
from flying and they would lie while the dogs pointed until we
put them up.

By October 1st pheasants could be shot; English pheasants become
wild. These roosted in the trees at night and so escaped the plentiful
foxes. Later on came shooting at long ranges, after they had collected
in bands, of the female roe-deer and also the hare shooting. Rabbits
were shot at all times, and in November and December and January
on foggy days it was not difficult to get a wild goose.

The hares were shot in cold weather, after the snow was on
the ground, by walking in line of ten or fifteen beaters with
two or three guns at intervals along the line and later, when
the hares were very wild and the weather very cold, by what is
called by the Germans "kessel-jagd" or kettle-hunt For
this hunt the head keeper would collect a number of beaters, as
many as a hundred, from the neighboring towns and villages, mostly
small boys and old men. On the great, flat plain the keeper would
send out his beaters to the right and the left, walking in a straight
line at about twenty-yard intervals. After each side had gone
perhaps half a mile they would then turn at right angles, walk
a mile, and then turn at right angles until the two lines met,
so that perhaps a square mile of territory would be enclosed by
the beaters with the ten to fifteen men with guns at intervals
in the line. When the square had been formed the head keeper blew
a blast on his bugle and all turned and walked slowly towards
the centre and the hares were shot as they attempted to break
through the line.

On one day just before I left Germany, I and members of the
Embassy shot more than two hundred hares on one of these hunts.
The German hare is an enormous animal with dark meat, almost impossible
to distinguish from venison.

After these hare drives, besides, of course, paying the beaters
their regular wages, I used to hold a lottery, giving a number
of these hares as prizes or distributing hares to the magnates
of the village, such as the pastor, the school teacher, the policeman
and the postmaster.

When we were shooting in the summer and autumn the peasants
were working in the fields and one had to be very careful in shooting
roebuck with a high-powered rifle. It is customary to hunt roebuck
on these flat plains from a carriage. In this way a bullet, travelling
at a downward angle, if the buck is missed, strikes the ground
within a short distance. If one were to shoot lying down, kneeling
or standing, the danger to peasants in the fields would be very
great. The pheasants were sometimes shot over dogs, but usually
as the beaters drove small woods. A pheasant driven and flying
high makes a difficult mark. One getting up before the dogs is
almost too easy a shot.

We shot the rabbits by using ferrets, little animals like weasels
wearing little muzzles and bells upon their necks. In the woods
where the rabbits had their holes four or five ferrets would be
put in the rabbits' holes and it was quite difficult to shoot
rabbits as they came out like lightning, dodging among the trees.
In the early spring the "birkhahns" were shot, a variety
of black and white grouse. There were some blinds or little huts
of twigs erected near places where the ground was beaten hard
and on these open, beaten spots early in the morning the "birkhahns"
waltz, doing a peculiar backward and forward dance in some way
connected with their marriage ceremonies. There were also on this
estate numbers, at times, of a curious bird found only in Spain,
Roumania, Asia Minor, and these plains of the Mark of Brandenburg,
a large bustard called by the Germans "trappe." These
birds were very shy and hard to approach. Although I had several
shots at them with a rifle at four or five hundred yards I did
not succeed in getting one.

In talking with the Chancellor he almost always opened the
conversation by asking if I had killed a "trappe." As
a rule the German uses for shooting deer and roebuck a German
Mauser military rifle, but with the barrel cut down and a sporting
stock with pistol grip added. On this there is a powerful telescope.
Many Germans carry a "ziel-stock," a long walking stick
from the bottom of which a tripod can be protruded and near the
top a sort of handle piece of metal about as big as a little finger.
When the German sportsman has sighted a roebuck he plants his
aiming stick in the ground, rests the rifle on the side projection,
care fully adjusts his telescope, sets the hair trigger on his
rifle and finally touches the trigger.

At the commencement of the war the Duke of Ratibor collected
all these sporting rifles with telescopes and sent them to the
front. These were of the same calibre as the military rifles and
took the military cartridge, so they proved enormously useful
for sniping, purposes.

Going one day to a proof establishment to try a gun I opened
by mistake a door which led to a great room where thousands of
German military rifles were being fitted with telescopes. These
telescopes have crossed wires, like those in a surveyor's instrument,
and it is only necessary in aiming to fix the centre of the crossed
wires on the game and pull the trigger. A clever arrangement enables
the wires to be elevated for distant shooting.

So great is the discipline of the German people that game on
these estates is seldom, if ever, touched by the peasants. There
is no free shooting in Germany. The shooting rights of every inch
of land are in possession of some one and the tens of thousands
of game keepers constantly killing the crows, hawks, foxes and
other birds and animals that destroy eggs and game make the game
plentiful. The keeper has the right by law to shoot any stray
dog or cat found a hundred yards from a village. I paid the head
keeper a certain sum per month and in addition he received a premium
called "shot money" for each bird or roebuck shot. He
also received a premium for each fox or crow or hawk he destroyed,
bringing, on the first of the month, the beaks and claws of the
hawks, etc., to prove his claim. Foxes are very plentiful in Germany
and in one winter on this estate, only twenty miles from Berlin,
the keeper trapped or killed twelve foxes.

The Emperor is very fond of fox shooting. Foxes are driven
out of the forest past his shooting stand by beaters and one of
the reasons why Prince Furstenberg was such a favourite of the
Emperor was that he provided him with splendid fox shooting, although
it is whispered that he bought foxes in boxes in all parts of
Germany and had them turned loose for the Emperor's benefit.

Fig. 7. EXAMPLE OF THE COMMEMORATIVE MEDAL OFFERED
FOR SALE. ON THE OBVERSE IS THE PORTRAIT OF THE CROWN PRINCE.
ON THE REVERSE IS "YOUNG SIEGFRIED" ATTACKING A CHIMERA-LIKE
MONSTER WITH FOUR HEADS: A BEAR FOR RUSSIA, A UNICORN FOR ENGLAND,
A LION FOR BELGIUM, AND A COCK FOR FRANCE

In the more thickly forested portions of Germany deer as well
as roedeer are shot and in many districts wild boar. In Poland
and in a few estates in Germany on the eastern border, moose,
called elk (elch in German), are to be had. These, however, have
very poor horns.

Talking to the keepers and beaters on this shooting estate
gave me a very good idea of the hardships suffered in rural Germany,
of the way in which the people in the farming districts are kept
down by the lords of the manor and by the government, and it was
from this village and the neighbouring town that I got some idea
of the number of men called to arms in Germany.

By a custom dating from the devastating wars of the Middle
Ages there are practically no farms in Germany, but inhabitants
of the agricultural districts are collected in villages and the
few farms have, characteristically, a military name. They, are
called "vorwerk" or outposts. In the village on my estate
there are almost exactly six hundred inhabitants, men, women and
children, and of these at the time I left Germany one hundred
and ten had been called to the Colours. In the neighbouring town
of Mittenwalde, of almost three thousand inhabitants, over five
hundred had joined the army. At the commencement of the war the
population of the German Empire was about 72,000,000, or something
over, and applying these same proportions it will be seen what
a vast army was created.

In the industrial districts where men are required for munition
work perhaps not as great a proportion has been called. The name
of the village on my estate was Gross Machnow, the road from Berlin
to Dresden ran through it and only a few miles east was the shooting
place of Wusterhausen where the favourite shooting box of the
father of Frederick the Great was and where he was accustomed
to hold his so-called tobacco parliament, when, with his cronies,
over beer and long pipes, the affairs of the nation were discussed
with great freedom.

The horse races in Germany are excellent. There are several
tracks about Berlin. The Hoppegarten, devoted almost exclusively
to flat racing; the Grunewald, the large popular track nearest
to Berlin where both steeplechases and other races are held; and
Karlshorst, devoted exclusively to steeplechasing and hurdle racing.

The jockey club of Berlin is the Union Club, which owns the
Hoppegarten track. Its officers are men of the highest honour
and in no country in the world are the races run more honestly,
more "on the level," than in Germany.

Nothing makes for mutual international understanding more than
sport. Even during the most bitter crises between Germany and
America I felt that I could go absolutely alone to the crowded
race tracks and, while I know the Germans differed emphatically
with the American views of the war, the gentlemen in charge of
the races and the members of the Union Club treated me with the
kindest consideration and the most graceful courtesy.

I am sorry that I never attended any of the Court hunts which
took place in the vicinity of Potsdam. A pack of hounds is kept
there and boars hunted. The etiquette is very strict and no one,
not presented at court, can appear at these hunts. As I did not
have an opportunity to present my letters of credence until a
month or more after my arrival in Berlin in the autumn of 1913,
the winter rains had set in before I was eligible for the hunts
and in addition I had not taken the precaution to order the necessary
costumes.

The first time that a man appears at one of these hunts he
must wear a tall silk hat, a double-breasted red coat, with tails
like a dress coat, white breeches and top boots. After he has
once made his appearance in this costume he may, thereafter, substitute
for it a red frock hunting coat, white breeches and top boots
and a velvet hunting cap, the same shape as the caps worn by the
jockies..

There are no jumps on these hunts. When the boar has been brought
to bay by the dogs, the right to despatch him with a long hunting
knife is reserved for the most distinguished man present. If a
royalty is present at one of these hunts he distributes small
sprigs of oak leaves to every one at the hunt, cherished ever
after as valued souvenirs.

When I first arrived at Berlin, having brought horses with
me from America, I used to ride every morning in the Tiergarten.
Because so many Germans are in the army, riding is a very favourite
sport and in peace times the Tiergarten is crowded with Berliners.
Most of the riding was done between seven and ten in the morning.
The early rising is compensated for, however, by the siesta after
lunch, a universal custom.

Shooting is almost more of a ceremony than a sport. The letters
exchanged between Emperor William and Czar Nicholas, lately discovered
in the Winter Palace, show what a large part shooting played in
their correspondence. One or the other is continually wishing
the other "Weidmanns-Heil," which is the German expression
for "good luck" as applied to shooting. All royalties
must ride and keep in practice, especially because of military
service. Indeed, all the sports of the Kaiser and his people converge
toward a common object---military efficiency and war.

.

CHAPTER XII

THE ETERNAL FEMININE

EVEN the women, many of whom are honorary colonels to regiments,
must keep in trim for the great parade days of autumn and spring.
Many of these female colonels appear in uniform, riding at the
head of their regiments. They sit on side saddles, however, and
wear skirts corresponding somewhat in colour with the uniform
coat and helmet of the regiment of which they are the honorary
proprietors.

German female royalties are rather inclined to set an example
of quietness in dress. They seldom wear the latest fashion and
never follow the exaggerated modes of Paris. Even their figures
are of the old-fashioned variety---pinched at the waist. While
in the Tiergarten in the morning I saw many good horses, but only
one fashionably cut riding habit. Many of the others must have
been at least twenty years old, as the sleeves were of the Leg
of Mutton style, fashionable, I believe, about that number of
years ago.

Many German noblewomen shoot and are quite as good shots as
their husbands. I was quite surprised once on a shooting party
to meet an elderly princess whose grey hair was in short curls
and who wore a coat and waistcoat like a man's. She shot with
great skill and smoked long Havana cigars!

When German women get out of the country they very quickly
imitate foreign fashions and extravagances of dress. The Czarina
of Russia, for example, a German Princess, is very fond of fashions,
and a friend of mine who had three audiences with her during the
war tells me that on the occasion of his first audience she was
dressed in black and received him in a room where yellow flowers
were massed. On the second occasion she was in grey and the flowers
were pink. At the third audience her dress was purple and the
flowers were of lilac and white.

There is one good thing about the king and aristocratic system.
The position of women in the social scale is fixed by the husband's
rank. There is, therefore, none of that striving, that vying with
each other, which so often exhausts the nerves of the American
woman and the purse of the husband . The German women give their
time and attention to the "Four K's" that, in a German's
eyes, should bound a woman's world, "Kaiser, Kinder, Kirche,
Kuche" (Emperor, children, church and kitchen).

The successful business man of New York or Chicago or San Francisco
is surprised to find how docile and domestic the German woman
is---no foolish extravagance, but a real devotion to husband and
home, a real mother to her many children. She matches that short
epitaph of the Roman matron---"She spun wool; she kept the
house."

When I came to Germany I found, on studying the language, that
there was no word in German corresponding to "efficient."
I soon learned that this is because everything done in Germany
is done efficiently, and there is no need to differentiate one
act from another in terms of efficiency. But the German man could
not be as efficient as he undoubtedly is, without the whole-hearted
devotion of the German woman.

German girls are given a good, strong, sound education. They
learn languages, not smatterings of them. They are accomplished
musicians. Domestic science they learn from their mothers. They
are splendid swimmers, hockey players, riders and skaters.

During our first winter in Berlin we spent many afternoons
at the Ice Palace in the Lutherstrasse, an indoor ice rink much
larger than the one in the Freidrichstrasse, the Admirals Palast,
where the ice ballets are given and the graceful Charlotte used
to appear. The skating club of the Lutherstrasse was under the
patronage of the Crown Prince and was one of the very few meeting
places of Berlin society. The women were taught to waltz by male
instructors and the men by several young women ---blonde skaters
from East Prussia. I tried to improve my skating and spent many
hours making painful "Bogens" or circles under the efficient
eyes of a little East Prussia instructress. Afternoon tea was
served during the interval of skating and one afternoon a week
was specially reserved for the Club members.

One of my young secretaries used to go occasionally to Wannsee,
near Berlin, to play hockey with a German friend; as the young
men were nearly all in the war, girls made up the majority of
each team. My secretary reported that those German girls were
as strong, as enduring and as skilful as the average young man.

Girls of the working classes, instead of flirting or turkey
trotting at night, make a practice of going to the Turnvereins,
to exercise in the gymnasiums there. If the members of the German
lower classes only had the opportunity to rise in life what would
they not accomplish! So many of them are very ambitious, persistent,
earnest and thrifty.

Of course, female suffrage in Germany or anything approaching
it is very distant. First of all, the men must win a real ballot
for themselves in Prussia, a real representation in the Reichstag.
In the Germany of to-day, a woman with feminist aspirations is
looked on as the men of the official class look on a Social Democrat,
something hardly to be endured. And this is in spite of the fact
that the nations to the North, in Scandinavia, freed women even
before America did.

The most beautiful woman in Berlin society is Countess Oppersdorff---the
mother of thirteen children. She is not German, but was born a
Polish Princess Radziwill.

The chief lady of the Imperial Court is Countess Brockdorff.
She is rather stern in appearance and manner, and rumour has it
that she was appointed to keep the good-natured, easy-going Empress
to the strict line of German court etiquette, to see that the
Empress, rather democratic in inclination, did not stray away
from the traditional rigidity of the Prussian royal house.

Countess Brockdorff is a most able woman. I grew to have not
only a great respect, but almost an affection for her. At court
functions she usually wears a mantilla as a distinguished mark
and several orders and decorations. We had three women friends
from America with us in Berlin whom we presented at Court. All
were married, but only the husband of one of them could leave
his work and visit Germany. The two other husbands, in accordance
with the good American custom, were at work in America. Countess
Brockdorff spoke to the lady whose husband was with her, saying
to her, "I am glad to see that your husband is with you,"
an implied rebuke to the other ladies and an exhibition of that
failure to understand other nations so characteristic of highly
placed Germans. With us, of course, a good-natured American husband,
wedded as much to his business as to his wife, permits his wife
to travel abroad without him and neither he nor she is reproved
in America because of this.

Among the other ladies attendant on the Empress are Fräulein
von Gersdorff, whose cousin is a lawyer practising in New York,
and Countess Keller. There are other ladies and a number of maids
of honour and all of them are overworked, acting as secretaries,
answering letters and attending various charitable and other functions,
either with the Empress or representing her. One of the charming
maids of honour, Countess Bassewitz, was married during the war
to Prince Oscar, the Kaiser's fifth son. This marriage was morganatic,
that is, the lady does not take the name, rank and title of her
husband. In this case another title was given her, that of Countess
Ruppin, and her sons will be known as Counts Ruppin, but will
not be Princes of Prussia.

There is much misunderstanding in America as to these morganatic
marriages. By the rules of many royal and princely houses, a member
of the house cannot marry a woman not of equal rank and give her
his name, titles and rank. But the marriage is in all other respects
perfectly legal. The ceremony is performed in accordance with
Prussian law, before a civil magistrate and also in a church,
and should the husband attempt to marry again he would be guilty
of bigamy.

I gave away the bride at one of these morganatic marriages,
when Prince Christian of Hesse married Miss Elizabeth Reid-Rogers,
a daughter of Richard Reid Rogers, a lawyer of New York. Prince
Christian has an extremely remote chance of ever coming to the
throne of the Grand Duchy of Hesse, but nevertheless and because
of the rules of the House of Hesse-Barchfeld, he cannot give his
rank and title to a wife, not of equal birth. The head of the
House, therefore, the Grand Duke of Hesse, conferred the title
of Baroness Barchfeld in her own right on the bride, and her children
will be known as Barons and Baronesses Barchfeld.

When Prince Christian and his wife go out to dinner in Berlin,
he is given his rank at the table as a member of a royal house,
but his wife is treated on a parity with the wives of all officers
holding commissions of equal grade with her husband in the army.
As her husband is a Lieutenant, she ranks merely as a Lieutenant's
wife. On the same day that Miss Rogers and Prince Christian were
wedded, Miss Cecilia May of Baltimore married Lieutenant Vom Rath.
I acted as one of Miss May's witnesses at the Standesamt, where
the civil marriage was performed, while the religious marriage
took place in our Embassy. Lieutenant Vom Rath is the son of one
of the proprietors of the great dye works manufactories known
as Lucius-Meister-Farbewerke at Hoehst, near Frankfurt a. M.,
where salvarsan and many other medicines used in America are manufactured,
as well as dyestuffs and chemicals.

In my earlier book I described presentations at the Royal Prussian
Court in Berlin, especially the great court called the "Schleppencour,"
because of the long trains or Schleppe worn by the women. All
the little kingdoms and principalities of the German Empire have
somewhat the same ceremonies. In Dresden, the capital of Saxony,
a peculiar custom is followed. The King and Queen sit at a table
at one end of the room playing cards and the members of the court
and distinguished strangers file into the room, pass by the card
table in single file and drop deep courtesies and make bows to
the seated royalties, who, as a rule, do not even take the trouble
to glance at those engaged in this servile tribute to small royalty.
I suppose that the excuse for this is that it is an old custom.
But so is serfdom!

There are in Germany many so-called mediatised families, so-called
because at one time they possessed royal rank and rights over
small bits of territory before Napoleon changed the map of Europe
and wiped out so many small principalities.

At the Congress of Vienna these families who lost their right
of rule, in part compensation, were given the right to marry either
royalties or commoners; so that the marriage of a Prince of Prussia
with a daughter of one of these mediatised houses would not be
morganatic. The girl would take the full rank of her husband and
the children would inherit any rights, including the rights to
the throne possessed by him.

Thus the beautiful young Countess Platen, shortly before we
left Berlin, was married to von Stumm, the very able Under Secretary
of State for Foreign Affairs. While she became on her marriage
Baroness von Stumm, nevertheless, if she had married the son of
the Kaiser, she would have taken his rank and her children would
have inherited all rights and titles possessed by their father.
This is because the Platens, although bearing only the title of
Counts, are a mediatised family.

It is noteworthy that in Berlin women of that blonde type with
regular features, which we believe is the German type, are very
rare. This type is to he found perfected in Scandinavia, although
a few specimens exist in Germany. Looking over a Berlin theatre
I have often noticed the predominance of brown and black hair.

There is always some one higher up to whom German women must
curtsy. All women, whatever their husband's rank, must curtsy
to a Royal Prince. Unmarried girls curtsy to married women and
kiss their hands. Men, on meeting women, always kiss their hands.

Berlin is certainly the gossip headquarters of the, world.
Some years ago the whole town was invaded by a mania for anonymous
letter writing, and when the smoke had cleared away few were left
with unriddled reputations.

It is the fashion of the present court, however, to be very
puritanical. No such little affairs are going on publicly, as
have occurred in the annals of the Hohenzollern family. For even
the old Emperor William, grandfather of the present Kaiser, had
numerous love affairs. The tree is still pointed out near the
Tiergarten where he met Princess Radziwill every day.

And the Chancellor's palace was once the home of another royal
"friend."

The Foreign Office was at one time the home of the Italian
dancer, La Barberini, the only woman who ever for a time enslaved
Frederick the Great. I discussed affairs of state with von Jagow
and Zimmermann in the very room where she gave her supper parties.

.

CHAPTER XIII

HOME LIFE AND "BRUTALITY"
OF THE PEOPLE

THE apartments of Berlin are designed for outward show for
which the Berliners have a weakness. They have great reception
and diningrooms called "representation rooms," but very
little comfort or space in the sleeping quarters.

It is impossible to think of dropping in suddenly on a Berliner
for a meal. The dinners are always for as many people as the rooms
will hold and are served by a caterer.

Only two very distinguished guests may be invited. The host
and hostess sit opposite each other at the sides of the table,
with the guests tapering off in rank to right and left of them,
the ends of the tables being filled up with aides and secretaries.
When a great man is invited his aide or secretary must be asked
also. These come usually without their wives.

After dinner men and women leave the table together and smoke
in the other rooms of the house, going from group to group. And,
although perhaps ten kinds of wine are served during dinner, as
soon as the guests leave the dining-room, servants make their
appearance with trays of glasses of light and dark beer and continue
to offer beer during the remainder of the evening.

The Germans talk much of food and spend a greater part of their
income on food than any other nation. They take much interest
in table furnishings, china, etc., and invariably turn over the
plates to see the marks on the under side.

Whipped cream is an essential to many German dishes, and in
the season a Berliner will commit any crime to obtain some plover's
eggs.

The weiss bier of Berlin, served in wide goblets, is rather
going out of fashion. It often is drunk mixed with raspberry juice.

The restaurants of Berlin are not gay, like those of Paris.
There is, however, a rather rough night life created for foreign
consumption. I did not take in any of these night restaurants
and dancing cabarets, warned by the case of an Ambassador from
------ who was reproved by von Jagow for visiting the "Palais
de Danse."

In peace time few automobiles are to be seen on the Berlin
streets. There are many millionaires in the city, but the old
habits of German thrift persist.

The modern architecture of Germany is repulsive. The man who
builds a new house seems to want to get something resembling as
nearly as possible a family vault. Ihne, court architect and Imperial
favourite, has produced, however, some beautiful buildings, notably
the new library in Berlin.

Munich pretends to be more of a centre of art and music than
Berlin. Artists have their headquarters there, but the disciples
of the awful "art nouveau" and kindred "arts"
have produced many horrors in striving for new effects.

The opera in Munich is better than in Berlin. One of the Bavarian
Princes plays a fiddle in the orchestra in the Royal Opera House.

The Berlin hospitals are better than ours, except for the caste
system which prevails even there, and there are first, second
and third class wards.

The underground road is built at about the same depth as the
New York subway. There are two classes, second and third; there
are no guards on the trains, only the motorman in the first car.
The passengers open the side doors themselves and these are shut
either by passengers or station guards. Accidents are rare, all
showing the innate discipline of the people. The charge is by
distance. You buy a ticket for five or eight stations and give
up the ticket as you go out of the station. If you have travelled
farther than the distance called for by your ticket you must make
the additional payment. This requires that each ticket be inspected
separately when taken up.

The tramways have different routes. These routes are shown
by signs and by numbers displayed on the car. Women motormen in
the war period caused many accidents.

For those Germans who cannot afford to ride or shoot, walking
is the principal recreation. There are a few golf courses in the
German Empire, mostly patronised by foreigners and American dentists.

Military training is always in view and the use of the knapsack
on walking tours is universal, even school children carry their
books to school in knapsacks and so become accustomed, at an early
age, to carry this part of the soldier's burden.

Occasionally, in summer, bands of girls or boys are to be seen
on walking tours. In addition to the usual knapsack, they carry
guitars or mandolins. These young people are known as "Wander
vogel" (wandering birds), and sing as they walk. But they
don't sing very loud. They might break some regulation.

Outside of the large cities and even in the cities vacant lots
are occupied by "arbour colonies" (lauben colonie)---tiny
little houses of wood erected by city workingmen and surrounded
by little gardens of vegetables and flowers. Here the city workman
spends Sunday and often the twilight hours and the night in summer
time. Of course, these are possible only in a country where the
workingman is in a distinct social class and where he is compelled
to be content with the amusements and occupations of that class
alone.

There is no baseball or substitute for it---the clerks get
their diversion in a country excursion or at the free bath on
the Warm or Muggel Lake.

These "free baths," so-called, are stretches of sandy
lake shore where the populace resort in hot weather, undressing
with the indifference of animals on the beach, men and women all
mixed together, the men wearing only little bathing trunks and
the women scanty one-piece bathing suits.

There is a bathing tent where two cents is charged for the
privilege of undressing, but most prefer the open beach. Few swim
or go in the water, but the majority lie about the beach, often
sleeping in affectionate embrace, all without exciting any comment
or ridicule.

The boy scout movement was taken up enthusiastically in Germany
with the cheerful support of the military caste, who look on the
activity as a welcome adjunct to military training. The boys certainly
are given a dose of real drill. On one occasion I saw a boy company
at drill march straight into the Havel river, no command to halt
having been given at the river bank!

The workingmen of Germany are more brutal than those of England,
France and America, but this is because of the low wages they
receive, and because they feel the weight of the caste system.

In a speech in December, 1917, I said that a revolution in
Germany would come after the war and that a fellow Ambassador
in Berlin had said to me that because of the great brutality of
the workingmen in Germany this uprising would make the French
Revolution look like a Methodist Sunday School picnic. A newspaper
reported me as saying this on my own authority and added that
I had said the Germans were the most "bestial" people
on earth.

I only want to be responsible for what I actually say. I did
not call the Germans "bestial," although unfortunately
it is a fact that many officers of the army and others have been
guilty of a brutality which has helped turn the face of the world
from the whole German people.

Not all the Germans are brutal. I received many letters revealing
evidence to the contrary.

Here is the protest of a German soldier, an eyewitness of the
slaughter of Russian soldiers in the Masurian lakes and swamps:

"It was frightful, heart-rending, as these masses of
human beings were driven to destruction. Above the terrible thunder
of the cannon could be heard the heart-rending cries of the Russians:
'Oh, Prussians! Oh, Prussians!' But there was no mercy. Our Captain
had ordered: 'The whole lot must die; so rapid fire.'

"As I have heard, five men and one officer on our side
went mad from those heart-rending cries. But most of my comrades
and the officers joked as the unarmed and helpless Russians shrieked
for mercy when they were being suffocated in the swamps and shot
down. The order was: 'Close up and at it harder!'

"For days afterward those heart-rending yells followed
me, and I dare not think of them or I shall go mad. There is
no God, there is no morality and no ethics any more. There are
no human beings any more, but only beasts. Down with militarism!"

This was the experience of a Prussian soldier. At present wounded;
Berlin, October 22, 1914.

"If you are a truth-loving man, please receive these
lines from a common Prussian soldier."

Here is the testimony of another German soldier on the East
Front:

"Russian Poland, Dec. 18, 1914.

"In the name of Christianity I send you these words.
My conscience forces me as a Christian German soldier to inform
you of these lines.

"Wounded Russians are killed with the bayonet according
to orders, and Russians who have surrendered are often shot down
in masses according to orders in spite of their heart-rending
prayers.

"In the hope that you, as the representative of a Christian
State, will protest against this, I sign myself, 'A German
Soldier and Christian.'

"I would give my name and regiment, but these words could
get me court-martialed for divulging military secrets."

The following letter is from a soldier on the Western Front:

"To the American Government, Washington, U. S. A.:

"Englishmen who have surrendered are shot down in small
groups. With the French one is more considerate. I ask whether
men let themselves be taken prisoner in order to be disarmed
and shot down afterward? Is that chivalry in battle?

"It is no longer a secret among the people; one hears
everywhere that few prisoners are taken; they are shot down in
small groups. They say naively, 'We don't want any unnecessary
mouths to feed. Where there is no one to enter complaint, there
is no judge.' Is there, then, no power in the world which can
put an end to these murders and rescue the victims? Where is
Christianity? Where is right? Might is right.

"A Soldier and Man Who Is No Barbarian."

The first two letters refer to the battle of the Masurian Lakes,
when the troops of Hindenburg, in checking the invading Russians,
indulged in a needless slaughter of prisoners.

I heard in Berlin of many cases of insanity of both German
officers and men who were driven insane by the scenes of slaughter
at this battle and especially by the great cry of horror and despair
uttered by the poor Russians as they were shot down in cold blood
or driven to a living death in the lakes and marshes.

An American newspaper said this could not be true, asking why
did I not publish the letters in my first book. But my first book
did not contain all I have to relate, and the letters in question
were sent by me to the State Department early in the war, and
were not at hand on the publication of my other series.

But speaking of anonymous letters, shortly before I left Germany
I received a package containing a necklace of diamonds and pearls
with a letter, which, translated, reads as follows:

"The enclosed jewelry was found in the fully destroyed
house of Monsieur Guesnet of 36 Rue de Bassano, Paris. It is
requested that this jewelry, which is his property, be returned
to him."

The package was addressed to the Embassy of the United States.
I took it with me on leaving Germany and restored it to the family
of the owner in Paris. The Guesnet country house lay within the
German lines and the sending of the jewelry to me shows conscience
somewhere in the German army.